Abstract
Objective: To assess the prevalence of emotional distress in nursing professionals working to combat COVID-19. Methodology: Cross-sectional study, web-based survey, carried out with nursing professionals from medium and high complexity services in the State of Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil. It was considered as dependent variables: prevalence of feeling of inability to control worries and prevalence of being easily annoyed or irritated. The independent variables were sociodemographic and family characteristics, work process characteristics and mental health characteristics. For the analysis of outcomes, Poisson regression was performed. Results: The prevalence of feelings of inability to control worries was 71.02% and of being easily annoyed and irritated was 75.31%. The multivariate analysis showed that the feeling of inability to control concerns was prevalent among black women, with income between 3-4 minimum wages, living in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, with a previous diagnosis of mental disorder, sweating , difficulty breathing, nausea or palpitations, recognize that the pandemic has compromised social relationships, have symptoms of anxiety and Burnout syndrome.Conclusions: The consequences related to mental health can persist and generate harmful effects even in the post-pandemic period.